Vera L.
Yelp
Came here during a one week trip to Honolulu. I had eaten at both locations in New York City, and found this to be one of the most delicious dim sum restaurants I've ever had outside of Asia. One of the things that I really enjoy is how the siu mai is truly unique. It really does taste like they make it fresh every day. There's also something about the seasoning that they use, where it doesn't taste processed. There are a lot of dim sum restaurants that actually source the dim sum, frozen and large packages, and then they just re-steam or heat up the day that it is being served.
Since I was eating by myself, I didn't have too much room to order a lot of things. This is probably one of the most unfortunate things about eating solo at a dim sum restaurant.
Things that I ate:
Chicken feet: served with peanuts.
PROS:
- Good amount for sharing, just a little bit too much for one person unless you absolutely love chicken feel like I do.
- I'm not quite sure how they make it, but everything was fall off the bone.
- Also, I don't think that this was fried. The skin was still fairly stretched, hot over the cartilage and the bones. A lot of other places will still be falling off the bone, but you can see that the skin is wrinkly almost as if it's been fried in oil first before being braised.
- ironically, the peanuts were still slightly crunchy, and not mushy as if it's been over cooked or braised too long. This is definitely one of my favorite dishes to get each time I come to Tim Ho Won.
CONS:
- none
Stuffed shrimp in eggplant : another one of my go tos
PROS:
- Super large pieces of shrimp stuffed eggplant. This is not one of the lighter dishes given the amount of each piece.
- Nice balance between eggplant, pieces and sauce drizzled on top.
All parts cooked through, but not over cooked. This is hard to do when trying to cook the shrimp and then also the eggplant.
CONS:
- Slightly on the oily end. Both eggplant and shrimp taste need a decent amount of oil to be fried in first.
Har gao shrimp dumpling: I have to get this anytime I go to a dim sum restaurant.
PROS:
- Came out nice and warm, definitely freshly steamed.
- Good to share especially if you're ordering more things between multiple people.
CONS:
- I don't know if I would call this extremely amazing. It was good, and it tasted a little bit more fresh or better tasting than what I've had another standard dim sum restaurants. However, it was still like the basic shrimp dumpling that I would get. I did not get the Siumai like I had in previous times, because I was by myself, and pork tends to fill me up a lot faster than shrimp does.
Service was amazing as always. The waiters were very attentive, and came to check in on me multiple times, especially since I had mentioned that I may order one or two more dishes, if I wasn't full off of the three that I had ordered. Even though I went during low peak hours, around 130 to 2 PM Sunday, I still felt a little bit rushed. This was a little bit unfortunate, because I really do like to take my time, especially with dim sum. That was actually one of the major reasons that I went during the off hour (in addition to reduce the risk of Covid, since it peaking). All in all, though, this location was much more chill and way less people than the ones in New York City. So that I don't know if itself was enjoyable. What I come here again? If in Honolulu and craving dim sum, yes, I definitely would.